Normandy part 1

Hello everyone, how are you?  Our visit to Normandy is over and I'm sending this post from the Hotel Chopin in Paris where we first began our European holiday adventure 7 weeks ago.  Before I launch into more tales of Paris, here are a few from Normandy.

The  ferry crossing from Portsmouth to La Havre was initially quite rough, easing during the night.  Our first ferry crossing from France to England was with Brittany Ferries which was well organised, fresh and clean.  Our second ferry crossing was with LD Lines and we found them to be very disorganised, the ferry was old and quite dirty and really could have done with a good scrub.  The toilet didn’t work in the morning which was a bit of a problem.  Anyway besides the less than wonderful ferry crossing, the weather on arrival in Le Havre was sunny although cool. 

View from the ferry window coming into Le Harve.

Our drive from La Harve to our accommodation was leisurely, we arrived about 1.30pm and were welcomed by our host Sharon Santoni from the blog My French Country Home, and her husband.  Sharon has a gorgeous self contained guest cottage on her property in Normandy and furnished in French style incorporating some of the finds Sharon has made at Brocante fairs. Here are some photos of the cottage.

Living room, spiral staircase leading to a bedroom.  Sorry about our luggage in the photo. 

Stable doors leading off kitchen to back yard.

Kitchen

This gorgeous birdcage is in the upstairs bedroom.

Mantelpiece display in living area.

Living area.

Downstairs bedroom.

Upstairs bedroom

Gorgeous bed linens.

Lace curtains at the bedhead canopy.

Window at the other end of the bedroom.

Detail of the curtain tie backs.

Rear of cottage including little glasshouse/garden shed.

Roses growing on the front of  the cottage.

Our first evening we went for a walk up the track behind Sharon's property to the forest and took in the  beautiful views of the valley on the way. We also met some lovely horses and of course I had to say hello.

 

Canola crop

   Monday morning we woke up quite late in the morning as we were catching up on sleep missed on the ferry the night before.  We drove around the area going through many of the little villages and admiring the crops of wheat, barley, canola, peas and a crop I’ve never seen before and have since discovered is flax.  It has quite a green stalk and has little purple flowers which Sharon says start off as white in the morning changing to blue and then purple. When it’s ready for harvesting, it is cut and left on the ground to go brown and is when the strengthening of the fibre occurs.  Here are some photos of the flax plant and other crops.

We decided to go on a walk in the Evreux area, the track taking us through farm land and through forest.  It took about 1 ½ hours and was very enjoyable.  Part of the track had not been used for some time so we had to do a little bush bashing to make our way through.  The forested area is at times used for hunting and we did see some used shotgun shells on the ground in a few places.  All in all we had a lovely day.

Wild roses growing along the lane.

Big fat orange slugs were crawling all over the paths.

Old farm shed.

 

As I have so many photos of our time in Normandy, I'm breaking our stay there in to a number of posts.

Bye for now,

Anne  xx